NEWARK, NJ — If a man takes his final breath in the back of an ambulance, but federal agents sign a release form a minute before his heart stops, does his death count?
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the answer is no.
Federal immigration authorities are quietly utilizing a grotesque administrative loophole to scrub their official death-in-custody statistics. Instead of providing life-saving care to detainees experiencing fatal medical emergencies inside their facilities, ICE is administratively dumping them in ambulances, issuing a “discretionary release” on paper, and washing their hands of the body before it even reaches the hospital morgue.
The latest victim of this paperwork scam is Jose Chajon-Raxon, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. One day after being processed into Delaney Hall, a controversial Newark detention center operated by the private prison corporation GEO Group under a $1 billion federal contract, Chajon-Raxon began experiencing seizure-like symptoms on July 19, 2026.
Staff called EMS. As Chajon-Raxon was transported to University Hospital in critical condition, ICE suddenly granted him a “discretionary release” on July 22. He died shortly after arriving at the hospital. Because he had technically been “released” moments before his death, ICE claims they were never officially notified that he died, deliberately keeping his name off the ledger.
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A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson callously defended the tactic to the press, stating it is “common sense” that ICE is no longer responsible for monitoring or reviewing deaths once an individual is no longer in their custody.
This is not an isolated incident. It is a calculated strategy.
A Calculated Evasion of Accountability
The death of Chajon-Raxon only came to light because U.S. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-NJ) discovered it independently. He correctly pointed out that the current administration intentionally killed a Biden-era rule that required ICE to review and report all detainee deaths, including those that happen within 30 days of release.
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That 30-day requirement was originally adopted in 2021 specifically to prevent this exact type of abuse. According to Deborah Fleischaker, who served as acting chief of staff at the time, “The policy changed to make clear that ICE should not release people simply to avoid deaths in custody.”
However, in a memo sent to ICE employees in June 2026, Acting ICE Director David Venturella explicitly rescinded that requirement.
Venturella wrote, “ICE is eliminating its requirement to report deaths that occur within 30 days of people being released from its custody,” adding that the agency is “returning to the standard practice of reporting deaths that occur while an individual is in agency custody.”
By doing this, Venturella essentially handed private prison operators a get-out-of-jail-free card. If an individual experiences a fatal medical emergency while in custody, the agency can simply “release” them before they die in the hospital, completely absolving ICE of any obligation to investigate the death or notify Congress and the public.
“ICE purposely reversed a Biden-era policy to create a loophole in which it can ‘release’ someone from ICE custody and then claim it has no responsibility to investigate their death or inform Congress and the public,” Menendez stated.
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The rollback of this policy comes at a time when deaths in ICE custody are skyrocketing. The agency reported the deaths of 18 detainees in just the first five months of 2026, putting the death toll on pace to easily surpass the 31 deaths recorded in 2025, which was the highest number seen in two decades. In fact, as of early June 2026, a total of 50 foreign nationals had died in ICE custody under the current administration.
Chajon-Raxon’s unrecorded death comes just days after Edwin Jovanny Lopez-Cornejo, a 41-year-old Salvadoran man, died on August 1 following a similar medical emergency at the exact same GEO Group facility in New Jersey.
When accountability is circumvented by a stroke of a pen, the message to private prison operators is clear: you will not be investigated for medical neglect as long as you can wheel the dying out the door fast enough.
Sources
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/13/immigrant-dies-delaney-hall-new-jersey
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/12/nyregion/delaney-hall-immigrant-death.html
https://abcnews.com/US/wireStory/dhs-cites-recent-policy-shift-after-disclosing-death-135599211
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/05/ice-deaths-data-memo
